We must hold the FBI accountable and demand that it address the threat of violent white supremacy and stop undermining Black political speech in the United States. Sign the petition: Demand the FBI stop covering up white supremacy.

Friend,

White-supremacist violence is on the rise in the United States and has taken the lives of many. Yet the FBI is downplaying this threat by lumping different forms of domestic terrorism into one blanket category: “Racially Motivated Violent Extremism.”¹

This umbrella category will make it impossible to tell how many incidents of white-supremacist violence the FBI is investigating and will help the agency deflect criticisms of its insufficient efforts to contain this threat.

Worse still, this reclassification could allow the FBI to hide investigations into “Black Identity Extremism,” a dangerous and bogus category it made up to target Black activists organizing against police violence.²

We can’t allow this to continue: Tell the FBI to stop hiding white-supremacist threats, and to stop grouping white-supremacist incidents with peaceful Black protests against police violence.

For the past decade, the FBI has used 11 categories for labeling domestic terrorism, including a separate category for white supremacy. While this system was flawed, the FBI’s pivot to using the new “Racially Motivated Violent Extremism” category means that we can no longer tell what resources are specifically dedicated to the crisis of white-supremacist violence and terrorism. More than that, the FBI is falsely incriminating Black activists and organizations for protesting police brutality.

The FBI and other government agencies have regularly denied that white supremacy is the face of U.S. domestic terrorism. From the Charleston, South Carolina church massacre to the killing of a protester in Charlottesville, Virginia to the murders at synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway, California, far-right extremists have been responsible for — or suspected of — most of the ideological killings in America in the last 10 years.³

According to a May 2017 intelligence bulletin from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, white-supremacist extremism poses a persistent threat of lethal violence, and white supremacists were responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks from 2000 to 2016 — more than any other domestic extremist movement.⁴By removing white supremacy as a unique category, the FBI can hide whether it’s applying sufficient resources to these real threats — and it can also hide how much it’s dedicating to its racist investigation of so-called “Black Identity Extremists”.

This is unacceptable. We must take a stand to dismantle the secrecy surrounding white-supremacist violence. Demand the FBI stop hiding the threat of white supremacy.

Thanks for all that you do—

Lucia, Sandy, Candace and the rest of the Free Press team
freepress.net

P.S. White supremacists are responsible for most domestic terror incidents in the United States but the FBI is covering up this threat. Urge the Bureau to stop hiding white-supremacist violence.

1. “Democrats Accuse Trump Administration of Trying to ‘Obfuscate the White Supremacist Threat’ With New Categories for Domestic Terrorism,” The Washington Post, May 2, 2019: https://act.freepress.net/go/30979?t=9&akid=12827%2E10296224%2E5pz3SS.

2. “Fear of a Black Homeland: The Strange Tale of the FBI’s Fictional ‘Black Identity Extremism’ Movement,” The Intercept, March 23, 2019: https://act.freepress.net/go/30980?t=11&akid=12827%2E10296224%2E5pz3SS.

3. “Tackle White Supremacy as Terrorism, Experts Say,” CNN, May 15, 2019: https://act.freepress.net/go/30981?t=13&akid=12827%2E10296224%2E5pz3SS.

4. “Durbin, Schneider Introduce Legislation to Combat White Supremacist Terrorist Threat,” Sen. Dick Durbin’s Office, March 27, 2019,: https://act.freepress.net/go/30982?t=15&akid=12827%2E10296224%2E5pz3SS.